It is well-known that a substantial amount of a teacher's time in the classroom is spent taking, recording and reporting on student's classroom attendance. While the value of this activity is considerable, in that it promotes attendance, the time spent in transferring lists of student's names between classroom and office is nevertheless burdensome.
The time spent taking attendance is typically multiplied by the fact that students tend to rotate from classroom to classroom as they change subjects; as a result, attendance must be taken each class. Some form of centralized attendance information processing must therefore be employed in which data from each classroom and teacher is combined to result in an attendance profile with respect to each individual student. Typically, if this task is performed, it is done on paper in a very slow and clerical manner.
What is needed is a method and supporting apparatus for taking school attendance which may be adapted for use in schools with a large number of class rooms, laboratories and other area which combines distributed and centralized processing of data to allow teachers to transmit information to, and receive information from, a central office computer.